High Tension For Tesla With Imminent Production Of The Model 3

The release of the Tesla Model 3 will mean a mid market electric vehicle which should hopefully be affordable to the masses, but gearing up for the deadlines and the path to release time looks like a big task ahead for the company. With a planned 500,000 vehicles to be sold in 2018, assembly lines are currently being tested with test models this month for a proposed production start in July. Tesla's Fremont plant in California will be shut down for a week in February to set up the production line for pre-production models and iron out the bugs.

373,000 customers have already put down a deposit for a Model 3 and the anticipation for the release of the vehicle has been seen as ambitious for some, but having some pre-production models seep out into the wild may be just the thing to keep the critics happy until final release. The starting price for the Model 3 will be $35,000, not including government incentives, which means the company need to be dead on target to get near their anticipated production numbers and also start to become profitable, which is key to the future success.

With the push for the model 3 production line and a summer start for production, news has come out of dissatisfaction in the workforce at the Fremont plant, saying that employees are being asked to work long hours and improvements need to made to working conditions. In a response Tesla say, 'As California’s largest manufacturing employer and a company that has created thousands of quality jobs here in the Bay Area, this is not the first time we have been the target of a professional union organizing effort such as this. The safety and job satisfaction of our employees here at Tesla has always been extremely important to us.'

Besides the internal wranglings of the company, Tesla vehicles are generally seen as a positive bet on the stock market and have arguably pushed the EV market in general with other automakers now pushing more of their own electric vehicles and associated technologies. Tesla's autonomous technology, battery cell production, along with recent acquisitions into the solar market are all making headway to an integrated line for all of Tesla vehicles, with solar rooftops and home battery storage all feeding into the electric vehicle.

The concern at this point is if Tesla can meet their deadline targets and keep everybody happy at the same time. The model S and the model X had initial production delays and some quality issues, which should be ironed out by the now production ramp up for the model 3 meaning very ambitious plans for the company. So it is critical if the company can meet their targets this year which will make the next 12 months significant for the company.